I love this colour. Effetre Straw Yellow is not very exciting on its own (or even, really, in combination with other colours) but it is a very pretty neutral transparent, and it does wonderful things with silver glass. It is a very soft transparent, so it melts very easily, and it is not prone to bubbling or boiling at all.

Here on top of Straw Yellow, silver leaf melted into the surface sort of disperses and develops faint, blue-ish halos. The addition of the silver has significantly darkened the colour of the Straw Yellow base bead. When the leaf is reduced and encased, it forms a soft, translucent blanket on top of Straw Yellow. In the bead on the right, it is as if the reduction and clear encasement layer have zeroed out the darkness that you see in the bead on the left..

In this bead I used a core of Straw Yellow, wrapped it in silver foil, and then encased the foil with Straw Yellow being careful not to overheat it so that the foil stayed intact under the encasement layer. The reaction between the silver foil and Straw Yellow makes the silver appear to be a rich, coppery hue.

Straw Yellow, like Pale Green Apple, Light Brown Transparent, Kelp and Mojito makes a good base for silver glass. Usually, if a colour will turn silver a coppery-gold colour and will do the stringer thing that you see below, it will be an excellent base colour for silver glass as well in my experience.

This is Straw Yellow frit stringer, made with Double Helix reduction frits (blend of Gaia, Elektra, Nyx, Psyche and Kronos). The bead is encased in Effetre 006 Clear. The result of this is less vibrant than with Pale Green Apple, but is still very effective.

And here it is with Copper Green, Opal Yellow, Ivory and Peace.

The only real reaction of note is with Opal Yellow. The Opal Yellow under Straw Yellow has a fair bit of pink blushing, and there is some reaction inside the Straw Yellow stringer lines on the left-hand side of the bead because the lines look very intensely yellow. As we can see, the Opal Yellow is not that colour naturally and Straw Yellow is not similarly concentrated in any of the other test beads.

I got distracted and didn't make any real beads with Straw Yellow, but I'll be back to update this when I eventually do.

Glass Colour Properties

About the Reaction Index

This index of reactions, or 'neat effects', is a work in process, and organizes the reactions I have observed in my test beads. I do not claim to have 'invented' any of these reactions, nor do I consider myself any kind of authority on glass reactions. In many cases, I have made up names that suit me to describe the reactions, and I'll continue to do that unless I happen to learn what it is supposed to be called.

I am a student of glass, and am taking a fairly scientific approach to my relationship with it. The results of that experimentation are here as a reference for anyone who is interested.